Home Office

British Nationality: Assessments

lord hodgson of astley abbotts: To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the recommendation of the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement that the book Life in the UK should be revised, and to the undertaking by them to do so, when that review will take place; and when they plan to publish the revised text.

baroness williams of trafford: The Government has announced that it will review and revise the Life in the UK test and associated text to give much greater prominence to and in-formation on the shared values which we believe underpin society here in the UK. We are currently considering how this will be taken forward.

Knives: Crime

lord scriven: To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to treat knife crime as a public health issue; and if such steps are being taken, what funding they have made available to treat that issue as a public health priority.

baroness williams of trafford: Tackling serious violence including knife crime is a top priority for the Government and it is clear we must continue to step up the response to stop this violence. The Serious Violence Strategy, published in April 2018 sets out the Government’s approach, which depends also on a multi-agency approach across several sectors and stresses the importance of early intervention to tackle the root causes.It also sets out a significant programme of work including the following:• Early Intervention Youth Fund of £22 million• £1.5 million for the anti-knife crime Community Fund• £3.6 million we have provided for the establishment of the new  National County Lines Coordination Centre• £1.4 million to support a new national police capability to tackle gang  related activity on social media • Support to the #knifefree national knife crime media campaign• The Offensive Weapons Bill currently passing through ParliamentIn addition, we are supporting police forces to tackle knife crime under Operation SceptreOn 2 October 2018 the Home Secretary also announced that the Government will: deliver a new £200 million youth endowment fund over 10 years and will support interventions with children and young people at risk of involvement in crime and violence; conduct an independent review of drug misuse, to be conducted by Dame Carole Black, which will ensure law enforcement agencies and policy are targeting and preventing the drug-related causes of violent crime effectively; and consult on a new legal duty to support a multi-agency or ‘public health’ approach to preventing and tackling serious violence.The consultation will explore different options to make multi-agency working more effective than at present and will seek to identify best practice. The consultation will be launched shortlyFurther, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced on 13 March that an additional £100 million funding in 19/20 will help in the police’s immediate response to the rise in serious knife crime, enabling priority forces to immediately begin planning to put in place the additional capacity they need. The funding will also be invested in Violence Reduction Units, bringing together a range of agencies including health, education, social services and others, to develop a multi-agency approach in preventing knife crime altogether.

Department for Education

Voluntary Schools: Admissions

baroness hayter of kentish town: To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment, if any, they have made of the impact on ethnic minorities of voluntary-aided schools that select 100per cent of their pupils based on their religion.

baroness hayter of kentish town: To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment, if any, they have made of public support for voluntary-aided schools that select 100per cent of their pupils based on their religion.

lord agnew of oulton: The department undertook an extensive series of activities as part of the attached Schools that Work for Everyone consultation from September to December 2016 to understand the variety of opinions relating to faith schools. Having considered the views of respondents, and those of a range of other stakeholders, the department decided to establish the voluntary-aided capital scheme alongside retaining the 50% cap in faith admissions in faith designated free schools. An analysis of how the voluntary-aided schools capital scheme will affect specific protected groups (equalities impact assessment) is attached and can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/voluntary-aided-schools-capital-scheme-equalities-impact-assessment.



HL14651_HL14652_Schools_that_work_for_everyone
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HL14651_HL14652_Equalities_impact_assessment
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Voluntary Schools: Admissions

baroness hayter of kentish town: To ask Her Majesty's Government what guidance, if any, they have issued to local authorities on consulting local people on proposals for new voluntary-aided schools that select 100per cent of their pupils based on their religion.

lord agnew of oulton: Alongside the launch of the capital scheme for new voluntary-aided schools, the department published updated statutory guidance on opening and closing maintained schools for proposers and decision makers. This document is attached. Proposers are required to consult prior to publishing statutory proposals for a new school and hold a 4 week representation period following the publication of the statutory proposals. Any comments received during the representation period must be taken into account by the decision-maker (normally the local authority) when making their decision. The statutory guidance sets out the department’s expectations on how the consultations are carried out, including the Cabinet Office guidance on consultation principles.



Opening_and_closing_maintained_schools_guidance
(PDF Document, 501.3 KB)

Universities: USA

lord patten: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have made any assessment of the impact of cash-for-student-places granted by the University of Southern California and other major US colleagues on the mutual recognition of qualifications and standards with equivalent UK institutions.

viscount younger of leckie: The UK has a robust system for the recognition of international qualifications. The UK National Recognition Information Centre (UK NARIC) provides expert advice on behalf of the government on the comparability of international qualifications with those of the UK. Our universities and colleges are supported by the UK NARIC service in making decisions on the eligibility of applicants for places in their courses.

Overseas Students

lord taylor of warwick: To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the number of overseas students attending academic institutions in the UK continues to grow in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

viscount younger of leckie: The government fully recognises the important contribution that international students make, both economically and culturally, to the UK’s higher education sector.On 16 March, the government published its international education strategy, attached, setting out its ambition to increase the value of education exports to £35 billion per year and to increase the total number of international students hosted by UK universities to 600,000 by 2030.To provide certainty to prospective EU students, we have confirmed that EU nationals starting courses in the academic year 2019/20 or before will continue to be eligible for undergraduate, postgraduate and Advanced Learner Loan financial support from Student Finance England for the duration of their course, provided that they meet the residency requirements.



HL14678_International_Education_Strategy
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Voluntary Schools: Admissions

baroness tonge: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to monitor the impact on social cohesion and integrationof 100 per cent selective voluntary-aided schools in areas where such schools are established.

baroness tonge: To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to monitor the impact on social cohesion of new 100 per cent voluntary-aided religiously selective schools.

lord agnew of oulton: All state funded schools, whatever their type, have a legal obligation to promote community cohesion and to teach a broad and balanced curriculum. The Integrated Communities Strategy made clear the important role schools play in knitting communities together. They are also required to promote the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs. Their effectiveness in doing so is inspected by Ofsted.

Voluntary Schools: Admissions

baroness blackstone: To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they intend to take to ensure that measures designed to prevent voluntary-aided schools that select 100 per cent of their pupils based on faith from having a detrimental impact on social cohesion, such as school linking programmes and religious diversity on governing bodies, are implemented and maintained once those schools have opened.

baroness blackstone: To ask Her Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to introducing measures to promote social integration in all schools, in the same manner that has been done for voluntary-aided schools that select 100 per cent of their pupils based on faith.

lord agnew of oulton: Schools play a vital role in promoting integration and encouraging greater community cohesion and this includes faith schools.The Integrated Communities Strategy made clear the important role schools play in knitting communities together. All state funded schools, whatever their type, have a legal obligation to promote community cohesion and to teach a broad and balanced curriculum, and are under a duty to foster good relations between different groups. They are also required to promote the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs. Their effectiveness in doing so is inspected by Ofsted.Many existing faith schools have a strong record on promoting integration and the department encourages them, as well as all new schools, to engage in programmes such as school linking, that promote social mixing within and across schools. The department is taking forward over 20 measures across its portfolio to support the sector to promote integration, as set out in the Integrated Communities Action Plan. This can be accessed at:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/integrated-communities-action-plan.This document is also attached. 



Integrated_Communities_Strategy_Govt_Action_Plan
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Voluntary Schools: Admissions

baroness blackstone: To ask Her Majesty's Government how they will ensure that local objections to proposals for new voluntary-aided faith schools with the legal power to select all of their pupils based on faith are adequately taken into account by local authority decision-makers.

lord agnew of oulton: Alongside the launch of the capital scheme for new voluntary-aided schools, the department published the updated and attached statutory guidance for proposers and decision-makers on opening and closing maintained schools.The guidance explains that proposers are required to consult prior to publishing statutory proposals for a new school and hold a four-week representation period once the statutory proposals have been published. In deciding proposals, decision-makers (usually the local authority) must take any comments received during the representation period into account.The statutory guidance sets out the department’s expectations on how the consultations are carried out, including the Cabinet Office guidance on consultation principles. 



Opening_and_closing_maintained_schools_guidance
(PDF Document, 501.3 KB)

Teachers: Migrant Workers

lord storey: To ask Her Majesty's Government whatsteps schools, colleges and local education authorities are taking to ensure that teaching staff from EU countries are aware of what their citizenship status will be post-Brexit.

viscount younger of leckie: The department continues to plan for EU Exit and to ensure that we are best prepared for all potential scenarios. As part of our planning, we are taking steps to ensure that our schools, further education and higher education institutions, and local authorities are similarly prepared. The department published guidance to provide information and advice to our stakeholders on how to best prepare. The notices include information on the EU Settlement Scheme and on the arrangements that apply to EU, European Economic Area and Swiss citizens arriving after EU Exit. The notices form part of the government's public information campaign which can be viewed at this link: https://euexit.campaign.gov.uk/. This campaign ensures that UK citizens and organisations, EU citizens living in the UK, and UK nation​als living in the EU are well informed about how EU Exit will affect them and about the practical steps they will need to take to be ready for it. The department has shared guidance with a large number of our stakeholders across the education sector. This includes the document ‘EU exit: no deal preparations for schools in England’, attached[1]. It also includes ‘EU exit: no deal preparations for higher education institutions’ guidance, attached,[2] and ‘EU exit: no deal preparations for further education and apprenticeship providers’ guidance’, also attached[3]. The document ‘EU Exit: No deal preparations for local authority children's services[4]​’, which will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.  [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/eu-exit-no-deal-preparations-for-schools-in-england.[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/eu-exit-no-deal-preparations-for-higher-education-institutions.[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/eu-exit-no-deal-preparations-for-further-education-and-apprenticeship-providers.[4] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/eu-exit-no-deal-preparations-for-local-authority-childrens-services-in-england.



HL14711_EU_exit_preparations_for_further_education
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HL14711_EU_exit_preparations_for_higher_education
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HL14711_EU_exit_preparations_for_schools
(PDF Document, 183 KB)

Sex and Relationship Education

lord storey: To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they intend to take against those schools who refused to teach the Relationship and Sex Education syllabus in full.

lord agnew of oulton: As with other areas of the curriculum, we expect schools to teach the content of the new subjects of relationships education, relationships and sex education and health education when they become mandatory in September 2020. Schools must have regard to the statutory guidance in relation to the subjects, and where they depart from those parts of the guidance, they will need to have good reasons for doing so.Complaints about the delivery of the curriculum, including individual subjects in the curriculum, are for schools to resolve through their complaints procedures.Where, during the course of a school inspection, it becomes clear that statutory requirements are not being met, that will inform Ofsted’s overall judgment of a school.

Voluntary Schools: Capital Investment

baroness whitaker: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether new religious schools established as a result of their new capital funding scheme and which are legally permitted to select all of their pupils on faith grounds will be encouraged to convert to academy status; and whether there will be a time restriction on when such schools are able to do so.

lord agnew of oulton: Any voluntary-aided school, including those funded through the recently announced voluntary-aided capital scheme, can apply to convert to academy status in the same way as any other maintained school. Whilst the department does not plan to put specific restrictions in place on academy conversion for this group of schools, they will need to obtain the necessary consents, meet our criteria and undertake a consultation before doing so.

Ministry of Justice

Prisoners

lord patel of bradford: To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the average length of stay for a prisoner in each prison in England and Wales, for each of the last five years.

lord keen of elie: We do not routinely measure the average length of stay of offenders in prison as to do so would mean examining a range of data including some offenders’ individual records. Therefore, to answer this question could only be done at disproportionate cost. We do, however, prepare and publish the mean and median average time served by released prisoners in England & Wales according to sentence length. Some of this data can be found in the table below, a further breakdown is available in the attached tables. Table - Mean and Median time served in prison by prisoners released from determinate sentences by sentence length and sex Mean time (months) served by prison sentence (male and female prisoners)Median time (months) served by prisons sentence (male and female prisoners)201719.282016R18.882015R 218.48201419.1Not available201318.9Not available Data revisions(R) Existing data processing of average time served figures artificially rounded down to the nearest whole number of months. The revised figures presented here are based on unrounded average time served data. This change has had the effect of revising all of the previous time served figures and this has also resulted in a change in all of the 'percentage time served' figures. (2) Due to improvements in IT systems, the 2015 prisons admissions data was taken from a different source, and, for statistical reporting purposes only, are produced using a different method. The figures in these tables have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

Youth Clubs: Rural Areas

the lord bishop of st albans: To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the report State of Rural Services 2018, published by Rural England in February, and in particular of the impact of the closure of youth centres on young people; and what impact access to services has on young people’s engagement in risky behaviour compared to those living in urban areas.

lord ashton of hyde: Government recognises the value of spaces for young people in both rural and urban areas: a place of trust and safety, that provides high quality information, advice and guidance alongside positive activities that can help young people to develop skills, improve wellbeing and participate in their communities.Local authorities are primarily responsible for allocating public funding to youth services in their area. We believe they are best placed to determine local priorities. The Government has made over £200bn available to local authorities to spend on local services over this Spending Review period.The Government does not hold data on the impact of access to youth services on young people in rural compared to urban areas.

Gambling: Video Games

the lord bishop of st albans: To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have, if any, to (1) ban loot boxes in online games, and (2) regulate such loot boxes through the Gambling Commission.

lord ashton of hyde: Loot boxes do not fall under gambling law where the in-game items acquired are confined for use within the game and cannot be cashed out. The Government has no plans to ban loot boxes, or to amend Gambling Commission’s powers in relation to loot boxes. However, the Government is aware of concerns that entertainment products, such as some video games, could encourage gambling-like behaviour, and will continue to look closely at any evidence around this issue.The Gambling Commission, as the regulator for gambling in Great Britain, has strong powers and can take action where it needs to address emerging risks.In September 2018, the Gambling Commission, along with 15 other regulators from Europe and the USA, agreed to work together to monitor the characteristics of video games and social gaming and where there is potential cross-over into gambling. They will also work to raise parental and consumer awareness.We welcome the introduction last year by the VSC Ratings Board and PEGI of a new label for video games to warn parents where they include the opportunity to make in-game purchases.